Dragons, Castles and Rocks

Lots of rocks here

My wife Vicki decided it was high time we went down to Bishop’s castle in south central Colorado near Wetmore to check on the owner’s building progress. We hadn’t been to Bishop’s castle in quite some time so we were curious to see how things were going.  To learn more about Bishop’s castle and it’s builder/owner see: http://www.bishopcastle.org/  I would say the castle is one of Colorado’s oddities, but still inspiring to see what one man can do with his hands.  The plan was to visit the castle and then have a late lunch in nearby Westcliff and head home from there.  

After lunch we walked off our meal and much to my delight and my wife’s indifference there was a well-stocked rock shop on main street. The store was open but the owner was out of town, so no deals could be made and the sales people couldn’t even seem to get their credit card reader to work.  Well my wife decided her walk wasn’t done and went a few more blocks to the nearest ATM to make a withdrawal and help me out.  After checking some of the labels on the minerals I realized the owner of this store was the mining partner of my former mentor--Ray Berry.  I saw many specimens from Ray’s shared claim called the 2^nd Mesabi. Ray called the claim Mesabi after the iron range in Minnesota due to the large amounts of iron(goethite) he found on that particular claim site.  I thought many of the minerals were fairly priced.  Some of his silver specimens seemed high, but the Lake George minerals I’m used to seeing like amazonite, smoky quartz and fluorite all seemed reasonable. Though the quality of these Pikes Peak Batholith specimens on display was about average in my opinion.  

Specimens for sale from around the world include apatite, vanadanite, fluorite, topaz with elbite/cleavelandite and more

The owner’s back room had about 40 flats of crystals on display with bags of dinosaur bones and many other fossils as well.  Underneath some of the displays I noted another 40 or so boxed flats.  I opened a few of them but found lesser material than what was on display.  I’ll bet there is some better stuff holed away somewhere in storage.  Oh well maybe another day.  Hat’s off to my wife Vicki for tolerating an unplanned rock hounding expedition in Westcliff and getting me some money from a nearby ATM to purchase some of the specimens. Sure is easier to purchase specimens than hunt them down and dig them out of the ground

Goodbye Sangre De Christo mountains, hope to see you again soon

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